Avalon Framework 4.0 Released

osi writes "The Avalon team is proud to A HREF="http://jakarta.apache.org/avalon/">announce the 4.0 final release of the Avalon Framework. The Avalon project is Apache's Java Server Framework. It is separated into six sub projects: Framework, Excalibur, LogKit, Cornerstone, Phoenix, and Testlet. Its purpose is to simplify server side programming for Java based projects. It formalizes serveral best of breed practices and patterns for server side programming."

ChangeLog for Avalon Framework 4.0

• Added new method to Component Manager and Selector for discovering if a Component exists inside or not. Also augmented the default versions with the basic implementation to discover them. [BL]
• Added stylesheet to convert Stylebook markup to DocBook markup. [BL]
• Changed the documentation build process to use Cocoon to build the site. [BL]
• Added new "Developing with Avalon" book in DocBook format. [BL]
• Added Executable interface to activity package. [PD]
• Updated Resolvable interface to allow a ContextException to be thrown on failure. [PD]
• Add a makeReadOnly() method to the default implementations of Configuration, Context and ComponentManager. Calling this method after the respective object has been filled will make the object read-only. This is a safety precaution to stop code performing unwanted operations. [PD]
• Updated the javadocs of many of the classes. [PD]
• Update documentation so that it is more accurate and descriptive. [BL]

Downloads for Avalon Framework 4.0 available at http://jakarta.apache.org/builds/jakarta-avalon/re lease/framework/latest

Comments

Re:For content management or web-based application

[DudleyDoright]

another thumb in the dike of web development?!?

Re:For content management or web-based application

[javaman235]

Does anybody have anythig to say about the status of Cocoon 2? I used Cocoon 1 for a while, but was none too impressed with the performace, mostly due (I think) to the DOM based appoach to parsing the XML. Does Cocoon 2 seem faster or more stable?

Re:For content management or web-based application

[osi]

When people think serving XML I think content management is a common first though, but the Cocoon 2 platform can also be used for application delivery. I am working on a project doing thus right now. I think you will find that to do an application you will have to write more of your own code, but that is the beauty of having Cocoon 2 based upon Avalon. There are new application building blocks being added to the Cocoon 2 project every day though, there is currently work underway to create a generic forms interface.

As for a relation to struts, afaik struts is a framework for building web-based applications specifically. Struts is based heavily upon JSP's, and most people use JSP's to deliver HTML. Some folk (me included) don't want to be tied so tightly to a display mechanism. (Yes, you can deliver XML with JSP's)

Buzzwords...

[zpengo]

The Avalon framework consists of interfaces that define relationships between commonly used application components, best-of-practice pattern enforcements, and several lightweight convenience implementations of the generic components.

I'm sorry, could someone translate that into English?

Re:Buzzwords...

[elfkicker]

Java people get to use all the best buzzwords. That's what happens when APIs are edited by the marketing department.

And to answer your question, no I can't.

This thing Rocks

[bloritsch]

Avalon is the architecture that Cocoon 2 (http://xml.apache.org/cocoon2) is built on. As a testament to the scalability of the Avalon Framework, Cocoon can handle millions of requests a day. But don't take my word for it, check them both out.